Category: POLITICS

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In The End – All Fizzle, No Sizzle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The present and future governor of the state of Wisconsin met in debate on May 25 in advance of the epochal recall election of June 5th, 2012 at which time the voting citizens of Wisconsin will determine if they are the same person, Scott Walker.  A year and a half of trench warfare politics with comments and actions at times bordering on buffoonery and hysteria have led to a culminating vote that will frame not only for Wisconsin but for the nation an electorate’s capacity to discern adult and necessary policy and electorally stand behind it.  The debate was a microcosm of the entire calamitous process of the past year. After all the yelling, Governor Walker remained serene and on point and his opponent Barrett, who gagged on the word governor, calling Mr. Walker “Scott” or “you”, waddled around the issues like – a man with no issues. If you are the political junky type, you can watch the nothing left to debate debate in its entirety  on C-Span.  After 18 months of incessant protest, innumerable recalls, million signature petition drives, and claims of Armageddon, the protest voter’s candidate found himself even unable to stand up for reversal of Act 10, the bill that constrained collective bargaining for some public unions and allowed Governor Walker and the state legislature to finally achieve budget sanity and balance, and the supposed line in the sand issue that led to all this recall nonsense in the first place.

The mayor of Milwaukee, Thomas Barrett, has engaged in two previous runs for governor and lost, with a recent clubbing by Scott Walker in the 2010 election fresh in his memory.  A politician who takes pride in having no discernible opinions that would irritate anybody or accomplish anything, Barrett has compared himself to Goldilocks,  “neither too hot or too cold- just right” as if  personality was the defining issue to solving the massive current problems of state and national budget crises.  Mr. Goldilocks while apparently personally aghast at Governor Walker’s legislative process to achieve budgetary balance had no problem in using the tools Act 10 provided him for balancing his own city budget, to the chagrin of the same public unions who must now stand wobbly behind him.  It seems Goldilocks was a hypocrite.

The problem for the democrat party of Wisconsin is after all the hullabaloo the polls are showing Wisconsinites are beginning to absorb the successes achieved by Governor Walker and elements that comprise his  true political talent.  The first legitimately balanced budget in years without one time gimmicks or tax raises. A pending budgetary surplus next year. The initial evidence of real private sector job growth and reduction of the unemployment rate. The restoration of rational purchasing and budgeting to local governments and local school boards.  The achievement of educational savings without significant layoffs or reduction in class size.  Mr. Barrett was left arguing that such success was making Governor Walker a national figure and a political “rock star”, and that was not what the state would get if they voted for Barrett.  Translation – I don’t want to be a success, just a guy …vote for me.”  I must say, that doesn’t  exactly send a tingle up my leg.

The polls would suggest that Governor Walker has a small but consistent lead of between 5 and 8 percentage points over Barrett in the final week leading to the election.  In the state of Wisconsin where  voting is done repetitively, and by busload,  and with voter ID being suspended by a liberal Dane County judge conveniently for this recall vote, the  Walker lead may be ethereal.   The process of democracy is at times very messy, but the Wisconsin recall drama over the last year and a half  has framed the issue in increasingly sharp focus progressively for the nation.   People – do you want a “guy” – or do you want a future?  Let’s hope we are done with those “guys”, and both democrats and republicans will finally be free to vote for people who are willing to be part of the solution.

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Triumphalism

 

     Modern politics continued its progressive downward spiral in relevance last night. We were treated with the bizarre circumstance of an American President travelling half way around the world  to give a speech in the middle of an Afghan night to an empty room , fronting his only attendants, some lonely Humvees, extolling his leadership in achieving the triumphant “conclusion” of the war on terror.   And then he flew home.    This was to be the pinnacle of a carefully choreographed week of focus on the Obama commander in chief review.  First, the intense focus on Obama the Warrior, bravely leading a decision to send special forces into Pakistan against Osama Bin Laden, and contrasting it to the supposed hesitation of a President Romney facing the same odds.  Then, Obama the Avenger, with his army of drone assassins seeking out the Al Qaeda fugitives and annihilating them in their hideaways.  Finally Obama the Peacemaker, closing out conflict in Iraq, and the Afghanistan, and standing before the cameras of an empty room declaring victory and closure.

     If only…

     The current president certainly didn’t invent triumphalism.  It was not so long ago that a President Bush found himself landing a fighter on an aircraft carrier, standing before a Mission Accomplished sign and prematurely declaring the end of hostilities.  But there is a uniquely narcissistic character to this President’s framing of himself as the indispensable cog that drives the successes and fashions a compliant world.  It is disturbing and unseemly that the President and Vice President celebrate the “kills” as if they are bounty hunters or democracy’s enforcers.  First, the elimination of Bin Laden, then the “taking out” of Awlaki in Yemen, and now the the President bragging about the erasing of “over 20 of the top 30 Al Qaeda leadership”, continuing today with the evaporation of 15 nameless Al Qaeda militants in the Yemeni desert.

     What is the end game of this triumphalism? When did the policies and international interests of the United States becoming inextricably linked to  a hit-man superhero and a scorecard of results?   History is unfortunately littered with examples of premature crowing and assertions of personal indispensability.  These examples have more often than not ended  in untoward ends for both triumphalist and the cause they so blatantly declared superior.  The American model of being about the philosophy not the individual is being subsumed by a new kind of politics more suited for the propagandistic bellows of a 20th century dictator, and its bound to end ignominiously.  Being the President who has collected the most scalps is unlikely to be a respected leader among those who still have their hair.

     We are left with the scenario of an awkward gladhanding  speech to an empty room have way around the world designed to impress a nation back home.  It does nothing for me, and I suspect intimidates no one who is in this President’s crosshairs.  Triumphalism. Profligate spending.  No budget in three years, and no budget in sight.  Extra-constitutional judicial leanings.  A country in economic wilderness.  The driving force of re-election – I may have accomplished little, but I am great nonetheless.

    Put it all together, consider the delusion of the man and his conceptualizations of the American process and I remain convinced. Worst. President. Ever.

 

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The Wisconsin Recall

     The effort to recall Governor Scott Walker of the state of Wisconsin is the final drama of a two year long spasm in American politics. The saga includes such diverse fundamentals as the right to collectively bargain, the onus of states to present a balanced budget, the assurance of the integrity of the voting process, the constitutional duty of elected officials to represent their constituents, and the very concept of democratic election. All of these diverse philosophical elements have been personified in the visage of a solitary man, Scott Walker, and the effort to destroy him and his capacity as Wisconsin’s governor to effect these philosophical elements, has made this saga one of fundamental national import.  Whoever ends up holding the losing hand in this process, the governor or the public unions that have spent tens of millions to destroy him, will ultimately impact how the nation as a whole faces up to its impending debt crisis.

     Wisconsin is no isolated example of the corrosion of the American democratic process and the integrity of effective governance.   In a process that has built over decades, the perversion of government to provide a temporary safety net for those who are in need into a redistribution process of taking from the private sector to lavishly secure the public sector, has fractured local, state, and national governments.  Wisconsin with its ever expanding multi-billion dollar budget deficits fueled by enormous pension and entitlement demands was in popular company with states such as Illinois and California, in having to delve into ever diminishing resources of infrastructure and taxation to support the ballooning public sector demand.  The Wisconsin of 2010, after years of increasing taxes, raiding transportation and malpractice funds, and securing multiple insider protections for unions and casinos, found itself awash in a 3.6 billion dollar debt with no political will to restructure the madness.  The electoral result was a complete flushing out of the system, electing tea party sensitive majorities in both legislative houses, and a county executive of Milwaukee County, Scott Walker, to governor, who had run a platform of a fundamental reworking of the public sector. 

     The key issue of the election was governance.  If the great proportion of the annual budget is off limits due to the beholding of the politician to the public sector behemoth, what possible avenue is available to salvage a functional government to the actual needs of the populace?  This question resonated in Wisconsin, as it progressively is resonating nationally.  For the newly elected governor Walker, the key to permanently solving the puzzle was the public sector union capacity to hold the elected government hostage through the process of collective bargaining.  Public unions had utilized tax funded money pools to put into place politicians that would protect their economic clout regardless of the state’s financial health, and maintained those politicians in positions of power in a feedback loop that subverted their constitutional  responsibility.  Walker saw that disengaging the public official from the threat of the public union by removing the collective bargaining capacity and the power of unions to command the state to universally collect dues for them from state employees would free governments to re-balance the needs of the populace and the needs of the public employee.   The simple act of separating the unions from guaranteed access to an enormous money tree would allow the kind of reforms to finally bring sanity to the budgeting of state and local governments.

     The effect was earth shaking.  The legislatures passed expenditure reductions that required public employees in the manner of private sector employees to pay for some of their pension and healthcare benefits, and to provide the freedom for local governments to do the same.  For the first time in years budgets became balancable, projects sustainable, and real estate taxes spiralling ever upward into the first reductions in memory.  The seamy underside of the marriage of public unions with politicians, in essence the worker with management at the expense of the stockholder, became exposed.  The state for decades had paid exhorbitant fees for insurances it was required to purchase through the unions, and the immediate effect was profound reductions in insurance costs when the monopoly was removed.  The removal of the hammer of collective bargaining allowed the beginnings of discussions of educational process such as class size, the student experience, the capacity to reward goood teachers, and the effects of tenure on performance.  Massive change and massive change to come with the first rays of sunlight on a secretive and rigged process.

     The earthquake of change that Wisconsin became on the strength of the voter in 2010 was such a fundamental threat to the survivorship of entrenched powers both at the state level and nationally, it could not be allowed to stand.  The push back was immediate, and overwhelming.  National unions made Wisconsin their Stalingrad, pouring millions of dollars and thousands of soldiers into a two year epic battle to destroy the Wisconsin revolution before it could take national root.  The unions demanded and got the 14 democrat senators to flee the state rather than face their constitutional duty to represent their districts in an attempt to block the bills passage, they brought tens of thousands to bear in daily protests to pressure the residual senators to give in,  their engaged enormous resources to attempt to vote out a key supreme court justice to allow the court to swing in their favor and rule the laws unconstitutional, they mounted recall elections on six republican senators to attempt to swing the state senate democratic and block any Walker reforms, and now the final and ultimate effort, to remove the leader of all that change, Scott Walker, in the recall of recall elections, on June 5th, 2012.

     There have been only two other recall elections of sitting governors in the history of the United States, Governor Lynn Frazier of North Dakota in 1921 and Governor Grey Davis of California in 2003.  In each case, it was not malfeasance but what was felt to the governor’s disdain for the will of the people who elected him.  The 2012 recall of Governor Scott Walker is fundamentally an argument of the will of the people, the will of those who in 2010 voted a reformer in  versus those who felt that no reformer would dare to effect the changes Walker achieved.   The battle is positioning for a titanic climax which will have profound effect on the national question.  Can a nation democratically face up to its fiscal responsibilities when the electoral process progressively is owned by those who will benefit from maintenance of their levers of power and an ever expanding population of entitled who are rewarded for their vote?  Governor Walker, if triumphant, becomes a major national force overnight, and a nightmare that may cause public sector unions to never want to sleep again.  Governor Walker, Representative Paul Ryan, Senator Ron Johnson, head of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus- something very big is brewing in Wisconsin.

 

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Sinking Ship

     A progressive frustration is building among those on the goodship United States that are seeing all the signs of a foundered boat and are seemingly unable to divert those who are naively or perhaps deliberately  navigating it toward the rocks.  What to do when you see the ship obliviously heading toward the iceberg and your warning shouts are drowned out in the stiff wind?  How to respond when the reef has been struck, water is pouring in and those in charge state everything is under control and continue to pretend there is no danger of calamity?  Is the ship so far out to sea that deciding to preserve yourself when she sinks ends up with you on a lifeboat with no hope for rescue or shore?  How does one respond when the captain responsible for navigating the ship through dangerous waters plows ahead blindly and when finally appreciating crisis blames all others for the debacle?

     We are rapidly reaching a time of impact for this ship that has been so steady through 230 years and the options for avoiding disaster are becoming progressively more limited.  What can been done when it appears a steadily larger portion of the ship’s population is trading responsibility for security and can not be counted on to work together and consider some sacrifice to right the ship?   Our educational process, which for several centuries has been anchored on the basic instruction of what makes the rights of an individual American unique and to be defended, has over the last decades become mute to the progressive ignorance of these American principles, and has traded them for propagandist causes and the shilling of victimhood.  It has permeated our culture to the point that the very pinnacle of leadership, the President himself, a supposed constitutional law professor, anointed the “smartest man” ever to hold the office, proves himself daily to be inexplicably ignorant of the very constitution he pledged to uphold, protect, and defend.

     The Constitution of the United States was a hard won, painstakingly researched and vetted document of specifically enumerated powers that left a template of easily understandable checks and balances to, above all, limit the powers of the rulers and preserve the powers of the ruled to navigate their own lives.  With few exceptions, it has proved to the world that even in a sprawling country of hundreds of millions, a steady and common sense course can be navigated despite so many competing interests.  In ship of state terms, it has until the very recent past seemed unsinkable, because the population at least had a basic understanding about how such a document protected them, and the government, though tempted, always bowed to the document’s ultimate logic.

    Now we face the unsteady decks of a 16 trillion dollar debt and a spending fetish that allows a self imposed spending limit barely a year before it has been consumed and must embarrassingly be increased because of a complete inability to accept its limitations.  We face the gushing waters of debt pouring into the hold, and the bilge pumps in the form of exhaustive but at the same time insufficient taxation unable to keep with the inexorable flood.  Most insultingly, rather than turn our damaged ship toward the safety of shore our leaders head it out to a deeper, more dangerous sea, as if they were free of the laws of nature, immune to the risk, and ignorant of the fate.

     One can only hope that on this ship of ours there are those of sterner stuff, who will see the crisis for what it is, and restore stability.  I just fear that the majority have forgotten what the original voyage was all about, and rather than man the pumps will look to their own safety and exit strategy.  What a sad loss for mankind it would be – because she was, and still could be, the most beautiful of ships.

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Swing Vote

    

      The 2008 movie Swing Vote  puts forth the premise that as a result of an impossibly splint American electorate and an election night malfunction the entire result of the Presidential election comes down to the single unexpressed vote of a New Mexico ne’er-do-well played by Kevin Costner. The future direction of the United States is implausibly tied to the ultimate “fence sitter” whose personal leanings are essentially unknowable.  Mark Steyn in National Review Online in his typically brilliant style  relates how a similarly absurd process is underway at the Supreme Court hearings into Obamacare, and how the shifting sand ideology of Justice Anthony Kennedy may be the deciding scale upon which the entire future of a United States, balanced or unbalanced upon a constitutional platform, is determined.

     I am not remotely suggesting that Justice Kennedy is a ne’er-do-well. The superficial comparisons with the movie end at the gate of Justice Kennedy’s accomplished career and intellect.  I am suggesting that our society’s ne’er-do-well attitude regarding civilized process has led us to this abyss.  When Chief Justice Marshall ruled in Marbury vs Madison in 1803 that it was the onus of the judicial system to determine the extent to which a legislated act conforms to the Constitution, he could not have possibly imaged that such a consideration would lead us to the calamity we face today. Reflecting upon a set of principles, commitments, and responsibilities outlined in a mere four pages of a Constitution, it was a capable step to interpret how a single action could be reflected in the clarifying single sentences of the various brilliantly crafted Articles.  He would have been dumbstruck to consider the constitutionality of a legislative act of governmental enumerate powers that spanned 2700 pages under the ludicrous title of the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act, a leviathan of a law that seeks to delineate all potential considerations in managing an American citizen’s well being, currently one sixth, or 2.6 Trillion dollars of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States.

     I am additionally not suggesting that Justice Anthony Kennedy is the modern day equivalent of Chief Justice Marshall.  He’s not-Not by a long shot. Justice Kennedy has , however, unfortunately been put in the position, as a result of a perfectly split court reflecting a perfectly split electorate, of determining what will be the American Truth every bit as important as Marbury vs Madison.   I don’t envy his weighty responsibility.

     Oh, to have to assess the potential constitutional conflicts of a law that at 2700 pages already is a temple to conflict with constitutional values.  The legislative crafters of this Noah’s Ark of Health Care, the crafters that nurtured and voted for it, had little if any idea of the consequences of such a blizzard of regulations, organizations, and powers. The main sponsor, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, suggested the best way to find out what was in the bill was to vote for it. The influential congressman, John Conyers of Michigan, suggested the very size of the law assured that he would have no time to read it, and that he felt comfortable voting on it sight unseen, if the people who assured him the law was a good idea would stand behind it. Behind such indepth analysis, the future of the implied contract of freedom of the individual and their relationship to a government with clearly limited enumerative powers hung in the balance.  No worries.  Certainly the justices who would be required to assess the law’s constitutionality would take the time to deconstruct the massive missal to governmental overreach. Actually, no.  A 2700 page law proved beyond their capabilities and as Justice Scalia opined, would represent “cruel and unusual punishment” to any one individual who dared break the seal and read.  So we are left with Justice Kennedy, the deciding vote, determining the very future of the United States, interpreting a law that no one has read, and invoking its future permanence or demise.

     Mark Steyn makes all writers take a back seat when he puts his mind to paper, and in the case of dissonance of writing laws that no one can read, and its effect on a democratic society, he stands as a Zeus:

“Who does read the thing? “What happened to the Eighth Amendment?” sighed Justice Scalia the other day. That’s the bit about cruel and unusual punishment. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages . . . ? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?”He was making a narrow argument about “severability” — about whether the Court could junk the “individual mandate” but pick and choose what bits of Obamacare to keep. Yet he was unintentionally making a far more basic point: A 2,700-page law is not a “law” by any civilized understanding of the term. Law rests on the principle of equality before it. When a bill is 2,700 pages, there’s no equality: Instead, there’s a hierarchy of privilege micro-regulated by an unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown, and unnumbered bureaucracy. It’s not just that the legislators who legislate it don’t know what’s in it, nor that the citizens on the receiving end can never hope to understand it, but that even the nation’s most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension. A 2,700-page law is, by definition, an affront to self-government.”               national review online Mark Steyn

      We are left to balance our futures and all that we have on the inscrutable machinations of Justice Kennedy. The careful balance of the three branches of government, so carefully weighted, and so brilliantly expounded by Madison and Hamilton, have been deformed beyond all recognition.  It is up to Justice Kennedy, to free the tethers of the future from the whims of a solitary individual,  and send this immutable mess of a  “law” back ,forcing Congress to do its job of writing laws that invite structured debate and are knowable to all, so that rational choices can be made.  Obamacare stands on the pretense of Accountable Care.  We all know upon reflection that President Obama’s centerpiece is of no account, providing care that is simply uncountable.  That’s no Affordable way for a democratic society to work.

 

 

 

 

 

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Dont’ Know Nothin’ ‘Bout History

     President Obama, as is his wont, took upon himself the role as professorial instructor during a campaign speech at a local college in Maryland this week.  Deriding his opponents as contrarians and anti-science in the ongoing debate regarding America’s energy needs and potential new sources of energy, the President clarified for adoring students the role of “rubes” in history in attempting to obstruct progress:

“Of course, we’ve heard this kind of thinking before.  If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society.  … There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently.  One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards.  He’s not looking forwards.  He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.”

         It is certainly not the the first time a politician has used an endearing nonsensical understanding of history to try to prove a point, and it won’t be the last.  Many presidents have made assumptions based on superficial understanding of past events and cultures to promote many wayward programs and agendas.  The problem of course begins to arise when a politician uses a general disdain for accuracy and a superficial shell of understanding of history, science, geography, and culture to form a bedrock philosophy.  President Obama continues to use historical facts and figures as if he got them from the back of a bubblegum wrapper, and it shows in his tendency toward naive and oblivious maneuvers in both domestic and international events. 

      President Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States, may not have been Mt Rushmore material, but the assumption that he was a culturally backward neanderthal is just one more example of not bothering to let facts get in the way of a good story.  President Hayes was a highly educated and intelligent individual, conversant in ancient Greek, a Harvard College law graduate, and a major general in the victorious Union Army.  He proceeded to become a U.S. representative and governor of his home state of Ohio, succeeding to the Presidency of the United States in the highly contested election of 1877 against Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York. In an election so contested that it required a decision by the House of Representatives to finally declare a winner, Hayes proved equal to the task, bringing a reputation for honesty and progressivism to the job.  The period after the Civil War was a time of significant political instability and Hayes brought a steady hand to the task, achieving an end to the north’s dominance of the south through reconstruction, attempting to restore integrity and performance to the civil service system, a tireless advocate for availability of education to all, and working to achieve what was felt to be at the time an enlightened policy of assimilation of native americans into the greater culture.  It also turns out that he was, much like Lincoln before him, a technology geek, and a believer in American industry and ingenuity.  The first functioning wire phone service of Alexander Bell’s invention of the telephone listed the Hayes White House as phone number 1, and Thomas Edison frequented the White House, demonstrating new fangled inventions such as the phonograph, to the delight of Hayes.  Even Obama’s dullard remark that Hayes’ attitude regarding science is what kept him off of Mt Rushmore comes up short. Hayes, a popular President, served on term not because he could not gain another, but because, he had campaigned on serving one term and one term only, and he was a man of his word.  There are worse legacies to be had than that.

     Is it necessary for our leaders to have a solid foundation in historical accuracy to make good decisions?  One is reminded that the highly successful foreign policy president Truman was a high school graduate, and President Reagan was accused of using Reader’s Digest as his predominant fact checker.  Even a President acknowledged to be a voracious reader of history, and a frequent interviewer of historians’ perspective in his analysis of current events, George W Bush, failed to articulate an in-depth understanding of events, at least in any way recognizable to his opponents.

     President Obama, however, is unique in his acquired knowledge set.  What kind of grasp can you have on the forces of history if you have bothered to restrict your reading and devise your thinking only through the bent prism of history’s aggrieved?  Can the man who is quoted as saying there are 57 states in the union, understand the bonds that led to each of the actual 50 joining the American union of states?  Can the President who felt a telling weakness of the American role in Afghanistan was the lack of available Arabic speakers in the military, possibly discern a victorious strategy in an Afghanistan devoid of Arabs?  Can a President who hugs President Chavez of Venezuela in front of President Uribe of Columbia possibly mediate a conflict between the two important South American countries, when Chavez promoted the harboring elements  of the murderous columbian terrorist organization FARC, within his territory?  Can a President who assumes that people from Austria speak Austrian, have the facility to understand the historical considerations that led Austrians and other Europeans to see the Euro as the means of integrating Germany peaceably into the  fabric of a modern Europe?  The list goes on and on.  The anointing of President Obama by historian Michael Beschloss as “probably the smartest guy ever to become President” flies in the face of this President’s clumsy grasp of ties of history that bind, and speaks to our loss of rationality in assessing common sense, achievement, and reasoning.

      The President is an ongoing example of our sharp societal lerch towards the domination of feelings, victim-hood, and pre-formed ideas in the national conversation.  It proves increasingly difficult to have an intelligent debate on issues such as economic progress, climate change, freedom versus responsibility, the principles that uphold a functioning democracy, the role of a constitution in a republic, and the extremely complex considerations of war and peace when the acknowledged leader of the free world has disdain for accuracy and the intellectual rigor for those very discussions.

     Rutherford B. Hayes may not be on Mt Rushmore, but he understood his role in promoting, not rejecting the American ideal, and saw his role as president as a steward, not an adversary, to those ideals.  Based on President Obama’s ongoing assault on history, the constitution, and the unique strengths of the American story, I can assure him when future historians review his time at the tiller of America, the stone head they will be referring to will not be a facsimile granite edifice on Mount Rushmore.

 

 

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Dog Days of February


     We are in that part of the winter in the northern climes where the novelty and romance of snow and fireplaces are wearing off and the cold, hard facts of an extended winter are becoming apparent. Like my faithful old dog, it would be nice to simply stay in and ignore the elements but harsh climate has to be considered and faced.  So must we recognize that the lulls created by the blanketing cold does not allow ignorance of what is just simmering beneath the tundra and will possibly envelop our days in the very near future. Events are warming up and warming up in a hurry.

      Syria and the collapse of the old order of things:    

     The Associated Press reports the assasination of a top Syrian Army general in Damascusand with it the myth that the Syrian revolt against the Alawite regime of President Assad is a tribal backwater problem is progressively being dismantled.  A conflict that is extending to nearly a year has proven resistant to the usual brutal bully tactics of Baathist thugs using tanks against people with rocks, despite the reported deaths of  over 5000 Syrians.  Now, in a truly ominous sign to the old guard, an attack against a army leader in the fortress of the capital city reveals none of the old guard can consider themselves safe.  The usual advantages utilized by tyrants for centuries, dominance of the military and security forces are beginning to seriously unravel.  New complications to order are rising- the suspicion that the assassins may be elements of Al Qaeda Iraq asserting themselves in Syria, trying to create further anarchy, their specialty, and making things more troubling for Western powers, who like to see the world in clean shades of black and white, casting the Syrian protesters as simple democrats striving for personal freedom.  Syria matters to everybody in the region, the local tribes, Shia versus Sunni, Iran and her Hezbollah proxies, Al Qaeda and its lust for suffering and chaos, Israel with her vulnerable border, Lebanon and Iraq with their proximity and internal interested parties, Russia, Europe, and the United States in their ongoing need to interfere and try to control events.  The poor average citizen of Syria is getting crushed in the process, the passive blanket  upon which all these bludgeons are striking, and the future is dimming for a rational, contained end to the violence.  The warming spring is going to bring progressive calamity and may yet involve all the players, in an ever expanding mess.

     Europe and the Euro:

          The winter blues in Europe are going to be replaced with a red hot summer of economic crisis.  Greece is struggling for simple survival in its quest to achieve the unachievable, a stabilization of its debt crisis while keeping the Euro as its currency.  Stiff austerity measures are being demanded of Greece in payment of the bailout of billions of owed bonds that were foolishly supplied by generations of banks to prop up Greece’s unwillingness to stop promising its citizenry a life without responsibility.  The final loaner is the one that the rest of Europe thought they had shorne themselves of forever after World War II, Germany – and frugal, powerful Germany is in no mood to forever passively funnel money into an endless sinkhole. 

     The spectre of a German economic and political superpower dictating in authortarian fashion how things are going to be from now on in Europe is being consumated politically just 60 years after its attempt to achieve the same result through military force led to Germany and Europe’s devastation.  Try as they might, I don’t see how the Greeks are going to possibly be able to maintain austerity and economic vitality at the same time under the Euro, and Greece’s default and Euro withdrawal is probably only a matter of time.  The idea of a vassal state will be extremely unappealing, and a return to the drachma as a flexible national currency seems inevitable.  So Greece goes to drachma…so what?  The so what is the significantly larger economies and debt messes of Spain and Italy that are next in line and Germany will feel only more pressure to secure its prosperity at the expense of its fellow European states.   The American led recession of 2008 will look tame compared to the European caused recession of 2012, and Europe will likely see a return of the type of unrest that has plagued it for 500 years – the suspicions of intelligent, competitive people who share neither language nor history, but are locked in the same landmass  nevertheless.

     Iran and the coming “high noon” moment :

     As dangerous as the above two scenarios are, the third has the potential to dwarf both.  Iran, in the clutches of an authoritarian regime with a seventh century mindset toward the world and twenty first century capability, is coming ever closer to the moment of truth regarding its nuclear ambitions.  Whether months or years away from fruition, the repeatedly stated purpose of Iran’s leaders to use nuclear weaponry to initiate a conflagration over the existence of Israel, has led to the complete attention of all parties.  Iran, with an economy in near collapse puts its precious resources into the dream of a super-weapon that will bring the Israelis to their knees, and the leaders of Israel, who finally led the Jewish people off of two thousand five hundred years of bended knee, are not going to stand back and allow anyone to corral them again into subservience.  The tipping point is likely this spring or summer and no one in the world is unlikely to go unaffected if the two nations go head to head.  Tod Lundberg of the Weekly Standard suggests the drawing in of every major player should Israel feel compelled to act for her own survival is inevitable, and will create the potential for world wide conflict.  The United States, despite the investment of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in trying to stabilize the unruly middle east crescent over the past twenty years, will find this final destabilization will dwarf the previous commitment.  High Noon is coming – Iran wants it, Israel can’t avoid it, and the rest of the world will find itself helpless to stop it.

     From the cold northern climes, the summer beckons for travel and adventure.  If you had intentions this summer, however, of walking the steps of the Acropolis, riding through the gates of Damascus, experiencing the seaside cafes of Tel Aviv, or contemplating the ruins of Persepolus, I would suggest you rethink your travelogue.  Its going to be a hot, uncomfortable summer.

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Crossroads

     The past week has not showered our civilization in glory.  President Obama spent the greater part of an hour at the State of the Union address ignoring an nation’s economic tribulation with an impressively deaf ear to what sage pundit Mark Steyn calls “our unprecedented world record brokeness“.   Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich surveys the ever approaching economic calamity and states what we are missing is a drive to colonize the moon by 2020.  His opponent for the Republican Party nomination for president viewing the debt bomb and destructive government driven healthcare initiative known as Obamacare as “nothing to get angry about.“

     I was out with friends last night that decried the lack of seriousness of our so called leaders when it comes to western civilization’s critical debate of our times, our ability to recognize and respond to our impending debt crisis.  It is obviously more enjoyable for politicians to talk about solar panels and moon colonies rather than the sacrifice and hard decisions necessary to structure a process that maintains our quality of life while preserving our fiscal capacity for that quality.  All the difficult questions that are in front of us –  what is a safety net and what is an entitlement, how are entitlements paid for and what security do they truly provide, what are national investments and what are national kickbacks,  what reflects a caring society and what reflects a functioning one – so many important questions, so many others to consider, and yet, a deafening silence. 

     The extent of the problem has been reviewed many times on this blog  but the cold hard facts never stop to send shivers up the intellectual spine of rational thinkers.  The 31% of the entire liable debt of the 235 years of the existence of a national government of the United States was accumulated in the last three years, with no end in sight of the upward spiral.  The Gross Domestic Product of the United States, the assembled market value of all the goods and services produced in  a calender year is now less than the acquired debt.  Confiscation by tax of the entire assets of the 400 richest Americans would no longer pay for more than one year of the nation’s annual deficit.  The unfunded mandates of the United States estimated at over 100 Trillion dollars is more than the accumulated wealth of all the world’s economies.  The estimated current individual responsibility of the debt to every living American is 48, 835 dollars and counting.  The United States borrows 43 cents for every dollar it spends, and the chief country it borrows from is its ever growing adversary.



        
It seems we are at a crossroads, and the guides we have counted on our entire lives are clueless as to which road portends a better future. Leadership that forever gives us what we want, versus showing the way to what we need, is not, minus some profound epiphany, in the current crop of those who seek to lead us. The British politician Edmund Burke has been quoted as saying, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” It looks like we are going to have to be our own guides on the correct road to national redemption, and pull our so called leaders kicking and screaming into recognition of the basic truths that face us all. In this case to paraphrase Burke we good men are going to have to overcome the do-nothings to inevitably triumph on the crossroads moment of our time.

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The State of The Union Sham

     The United States Constitution identifies a specific responsibility of the head of the executive branch, the President, to report to the legislative branch his or her understanding as to the current state of the nation and recommend possible agendas for review and development.  Article 2 Section 3 specific to the powers and responsibilities of the Executive branch, requires of the executive:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information as to the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient

     From the first President of the United States to the current one, the requirement has been taken on with variable sincerity.  After Washington’s first address to the Congress in person, the tradition was converted to a report read indirectly by a designate to the Congress on the request of Thomas Jefferson, to avoid the appearance in Jefferson’s eyes of magisterial overtones, so committed was Jefferson to the concept of co-equal branches of government.  Woodrow Wilson took back the role of personally delivering the speech  in front of a joint session and ever since the event has taken on appearance of spectacle.  The eventual presence of television did what nearly 200 years of Presidential speeches could not, warp the purpose of the president’s requirement to report to Congress into one in which he reported directly to the American people, with Congress, Judiciary, and assembled military figures and important guests the captive props for the President’s stage.  The modern media have become willing accomplices in the elevation of the speech to theater, as it allowed them to create a dramatic venue.  No one has bothered to note the damage done to the nation’s Framers original intent.

     The President who may have begun the process of sticking a fork in the serious nature of an executive report was our first actor in chief, Ronald Reagan, who began to highlight personal stories in the speech by inviting guests who represented “American hero” props for the president’s agenda.  Soon no president could be without identifying a “hero”, or seem to appear to be insensitive to the ‘average joe’s’ role in the American agenda.  President Clinton took the speech to another level, converting the report into a never ending litany of self absorbed projects without any correlative agenda other than they all sprang from his disorganized wonk personality.  Clinton’s state of the union speeches introduced America to the concept of speech as endurance contest, with members of Congress visibly falling asleep during the speech, including one specially poignant moment when his own wife Hillary nodded off.

    President Obama has managed however in 2012 to be the first President to give a state of the union speech in which he never discussed the state of the union.  Certainly the job of explaining your role in projecting an agenda that has led to 10% unemployment, 5 million fewer jobs then when he took office, a 5 Trillion dollar increase in the nation’s debt in three years, an empty energy plan based on undermining any form of energy development in cost effective, efficient and available fuel sources, and a myriad of foreign policy reversals is assuredly not easy. But the speech managed to score a perfect avoidance of any subjects that would address any of these pressing issues, instead becoming a platform for another campaign speech.  The president even devised a new prop not thought of before, inviting Warren Buffet’s secretary to sit with the first lady and substituting the typical “American Hero” prop with instead an average “American Victim” that in its current tax policy, America has decided to screw, making her supposedly pay more taxes on a percentage basis than her billionaire boss Buffet.

     And we were all asked to watch.  It is part of the sham of the current American political process that the newspeak Orwell warned us about has penetrated the President’s duty to Congress. President Obama demands passage of a bill he just vetoed.  President Obama expresses his willingness to drill for oil a week after killing the Keystone pipeline  that would take such oil to refineries.  President Obama decries the role of regulation in burdening job growth then describes one after another governmental process to “assure fairness”.  President Obama talks of budgetary restraint in the greatest outpouring of national deficit spending in our nation’s history.

     Is this the cornerstone of an agenda designed to advance America as envisioned by the Founders, or the creaky pablum of a politician who is no longer even aware of why this event, the State of the Union, exists in the first place?     We are in the throes of a President who sits not astride history, but rather, has turned his back on it.  Unfortunately he reflects an ever growing number of Americans who assume their bounty has come about because of all encompassing government, not as a result of any individual’s labors. If President Obama will not assess the state of the union as required by his oath as executive, I humbly will.  Citizens, the State of the Union is bad,  and its going to take a real awakening to stop all the theatrics, and get down to some real and lasting solutions.  We need to recognize a sham when we see one confronting us, and note it rhymes with scam.  Let’s use the Constitution to remove those who want to make a pretense of all that it stands for, with their every word and inaction.

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The Newt Re-Boot

      A cat is said to have nine lives.  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich may indeed have a feline pedigree.  Closing polls in preparation for the vote in the South Carolina primary for the republican nomination for the U.S. presidency suggest a lead in the double digits for Gingrich in a bell weather state that has unfailingly predicted the republican nominee over the years with their primary’s winner.  The 68 year old Gingrich has managed to become the establishment’s worst nightmare in his apparent teflon coating to their unceasing denigration of his persona and candidacy.  The essential summation of their argument, whether it be the national media, Mitt Romney, the National Review editorial board, the republican party establishment, or essentially anyone who has ever known him well, is “Come on, Newt! Don’t you get it? Nobody likes you!”

     Well, apparently some people out there like Newt. Gingrich has managed to amazingly position himself as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, after every other conceivable alternative so obviously better suited for the mantle has fallen away.  Gingrich’s path to supremacy has been patterned after your local county fair sponsored demolition derby – take your tired old car out there and rear end everyone else’s car until you are the last man standing.  Even if your car barely moves, as long as its the last one running, you win.  Gingrich was first viewed last summer as an out of touch has been with no chance, starting with the incomprehensibly stupid attack on Paul Ryan, the only politician in recent memory to articulate a rational plan to save us from catastrophic deficit doom.  Noting the profound mistake of unserious thinking in an era of a very serious electorate, Gingrich bided his time and somehow managed to cling to a political life raft long enough to get to the debate season of last fall. The debates performed in repetitive fashion showed that being able to formulate a cohesive thought in a reproducible fashion managed to elevate him above half the pretenders in the field.  Conservatives took notice, not of his conservatism, but rather his relative eloquence, and found themselves determined to avoid the perpetual quandary of nominating conservatives who are incapable of enunciating a coherent defense of conservatism. 

     Suddenly Gingrich’s debating star began to rise with a parallel rise in the polls, and with it, the re-focus on all his foibles. And oh, those foibles!  The taking of money from Fanny and Freddy, the string of incoherent ideas ping ponging from libertarianism to socialist thought, the mine field personal life, the continuing attacks on free market capitalism – all packaged in one candidate.  The focus on the foibles made voters shake themselves dry of their quick dip in the waters of Newt, and he proved an also ran consecutively in both Iowa and New Hampshire, finishing behind a candidate who believes the United States should build a surrounding moat and kiss the rest of the world goodbye.  One would have thought that would be enough to have, as the brilliant Eliza Doolittle once stated so insightfully, ” dun ’em in”.

     In little more than a week, all that has changed. Governor Perry has dropped out and endorsed Newt, Congressman Ron Paul keeps talking, which eliminates any chance of him being elected, and Rick Santorum is, well, Rick Santorum.  For all the conservatives, constitutionalists, tea party advocates, limited government crusaders, return to standards warriors, and Ryan, Christie, Jindal, and Palin dreamers, the last car in the way of the statist candidate Romney is —    newt.

     Now that didn’t exactly work out quite like we were hoping, did it?  The crusading hero to finally lead us out of this hole we’ve dug ourselves is this guy?  It boggles the mind. At least it is a recognition that in this time of soundbites, tweets, and collusional press, that the strains of democracy can still push and pull the system to propel candidates to face up to the chaos and try to find a winning message.  The electoral process was designed to have candidates fine tune their message in response to the voters across the country, not walk away with the prize before the first ballot was struck.  This could take awhile, and to the candidates’ and nation’s benefit.   Romney versus Gingrich.  Hmmm.  Not exactly Frazier – Ali but compared to the alternative…. a nation shudders.